MyDD’s Googlenuke Campaign

posted at 11:38 pm on October 22, 2006 by Bryan

The utilization of Google Adwords and simultaneous, widespread embedded hyperlinks in order to drive as many voters as possible toward the most damning, non-partisan article written on the Republican candidate in seventy key US Senate and House races. The campaign will run from Tuesday, October 24th until Tuesday, November 7th.

How do you define “non-partisan” in this context? There are an awful lot of blogs, for instance, that don’t have paid connections to candidates and therefore don’t meet the usual definition of partisan but are in fact as partisan as can be. The Nation, for instance. Even The New Republic.

Does the NYT fit the definition of “non-partisan?” Newsweek? Just wondering.

Anyway. The astrologer’s club’s campaign is fascinatingly evil:

The campaign will proceed as follows:

* Step One: With help form readers at Dailykos and MyDD, I will compile a list of seventy article, one for each targeted race. Every article will focus on a different Republican candidate, and will be written by as generally trusted a news source as possible. It will also present as unflattering a view on the Republican candidate as possible. All of these articles will be placed into a database that I will maintain with the help of willing volunteers.

* Step Two: Once the database is complete, BlogPac will purchase Google Adwords that will place each negative article on the most common searches for each Republican candidate. Simultaneously, I will produce an article on MyDD that embeds that negative article into a hyperlink that names the Republican candidate. I will then send a copy of that post out to as many bloggers as possible, who can also place the post on their blogs. One posting of this article will be enough.

* Step Three: All further discussion of the Republican candidates in question on all participating blogs should include an embedded hyperlink that will increase the Google search rank of the article on the given candidate.

The result of this should be that the most damning, non-partisan article written on every key Republican candidate for house and Senate will appear both high on every Google search for that candidate, and automatically as an advertisement on every search for that candidate. BlogPac will cover the costs. The netroots will supply the research.

If the nutroots are supplying the research, well, you just know it’ll be reliable. I mean, these are people who can’t even Google “Clinton Iraq 1998” to figure out for themselves that the whole “Bush LIED, people DIED” mantra is itself a lie. These are people who can’t rub two search terms together and get link after link between Saddam Hussein and terrorism. These are the people who are going to build a nuclear Google bomb and drop it on the GOP? For some reason, I feel less threatened by this than I guess I should. Their cyber nuke will probably pack all the punch of that North Korean dud.

Nevertheless, it’s good to expose tactics like these. It takes a devious mind to come up with a convoluted way to rig Google search terms, tie that to Google ads and hope to move democracy your way via online hypnosis. What would such a mind do from inside Congress, or the White House?